tell me, my soul, why art thou restless? why dost thou look forward to the future with such strong desire? the present is thine,--and the past;--and the future shall be! o that thou didst look forward to the great hereafter with half the longing wherewith thou longest for an earthly future,--which a few days at most will bring thee! to the meeting of the dead, as to the meeting of the absent! thou glorious spirit-land! o, that i could behold thee as thou art,--the region of life, and light, and love, and the dwelling-place of those beloved ones, whose being has flowed onward like a silver-clear stream into the solemn-sounding main, into the ocean of eternity.
such were the thoughts that passed through thesoul of flemming, as he lay in utter solitude and silence on the rounded summit of one of the mountains of the furca pass, and gazed, with tears in his eyes, and ardent longing in his heart, up into the blue-swimming heaven overhead, and at the glaciers and snowy mountain-peaks around him. highest and whitest of all, stood the peak of the jungfrau, which seemed near him, though it rose afar off from the bosom of the lauterbrunner thal. there it stood, holy and high and pure, the bride of heaven, all veiled and clothed in white, and lifted the thoughts of the beholder heavenward. o, he little thought then, as he gazed at it with longing and delight, how soon a form was to arise in his own soul, as holy, and high, and pure as this, and like this point heavenward.
thus lay the traveller on the mountain summit, reposing his weary limbs on the short, brown grass, which more resembled moss than grass. he had sent his guide forward, that he might be alone. his soul within him was wild with a fierce and painful delight. the mountain air excited him; the mountain solitudes enticed, yet maddened him. every peak, every sharp, jagged iceberg, seemed to pierce him. the silence was awful and sublime. it was like that in the soul of a dying man, when he hears no more the sounds of earth. he seemed to be laying aside his earthly garments. the heavens were near unto him; but between him and heaven every evil deed he had done arose gigantic, like those mountain-peaks, and breathed an icy breath upon him. o, let not the soul that suffers, dare to look nature in the face, where she sits majestically aloft in the solitude of the mountains; for her face is hard and stern, and looks not in compassion upon her weak and erring child. it is the countenance of an accusing archangel, who summons us to judgment. in the valley she wears the countenance of a virgin mother, looking at us with tearful eyes, and a face of pity and love!
but yesterday flemming had come up the valley of the saint gothard pass, through amsteg, where the kerstelenbach comes dashing down the maderaner thal, from its snowy cradle overhead. the road is steep, and runs on zigzag terraces. the sides of the mountains are barren cliffs; and from their cloud-capped summits, unheard amid the roar of the great torrent below, come streams of snowwhite foam, leaping from rock to rock, like the mountain chamois. as you advance, the scene grows wilder and more desolate. there is not a tree in sight,--not a human habitation. clouds, black as midnight, lower upon you from the ravines overhead; and the mountain torrent beneath is but a sheet of foam, and sends up an incessant roar. a sudden turn in the road brings you in sight of a lofty bridge, stepping from cliff to cliff with a single stride. a fearful cataract howls beneath it, like an evil spirit, and fills the air with mist; and the mountain wind claps its hands and shrieks through the narrow pass, ha! ha!--this is the devil's bridge. it leads the traveller across the fearful chasm, and through a mountain gallery into the broad, green, silent meadow of andermath.
even the sunny morning, which followed thisgloomy day, had not chased the desolate impression from the soul of flemming. his excitement increased as he lost himself more and more among the mountains; and now, as he lay all alone on the summit of the sunny hill, with only glaciers and snowy peaks about him, his soul, as i have said, was wild with a fierce and painful delight.
a human voice broke his reverie. he looked, and beheld at a short distance from him, the athletic form of a mountain herdsman, who was approaching the spot where he lay. he was a young man, clothed in a rustic garb, and holding a long staff in his hand. when flemming rose, he stood still, and gazed at him, as if he loved the face of man, even in a stranger, and longed to hear a human voice, though it might speak in an unknown tongue. he answered flemming's salutation in a rude mountain dialect, and in reply to his questions said;
"i, with two others, have charge of two hundred head of cattle on these mountains. throughthe two summer months we remain here night and day; for which we receive each a napoleon."
flemming gave him half his summer wages. he was glad to do a good deed in secret, and yet so near heaven. the man received it as his due, like a toll-keeper; and soon after departed, leaving the traveller alone. and the traveller went his way down the mountain, as one distraught. he stopped only to pluck one bright blue flower, which bloomed all alone in the vast desert, and looked up at him, as if to say; "o take me with you! leave me not here companionless!"
ere long he reached the magnificent glacier of the rhone; a frozen cataract, more than two thousand feet in height, and many miles broad at its base. it fills the whole valley between two mountains, running back to their summits. at the base it is arched, like a dome; and above, jagged and rough, and resembles a mass of gigantic crystals, of a pale emerald tint, mingled with white. a snowy crust covers its surface; but at every rent and crevice the pale green ice shines clear in thesun. its shape is that of a glove, lying with the palm downwards, and the fingers crooked and close together. it is a gauntlet of ice, which, centuries ago, winter, the king of these mountains, threw down in defiance to the sun; and year by year the sun strives in vain to lift it from the ground on the point of his glittering spear. a feeling of wonder and delight came over the soul of flemming when he beheld it, and he shouted and cried aloud;
"how wonderful! how glorious!"
after lingering a few hours in the cold, desolate valley, he climbed in the afternoon the steep mayen-wand, on the grimsel, passed the lake of the dead, with its ink-black waters; and through the melting snow, and over slippery stepping-stones in the beds of numberless shallow brooks, descended to the grimsel hospital, where he passed the night, and thought it the most lone and desolate spot, that man ever slept in.
on the morrow, he rose with the day; and the rising sun found him already standing on the rusticbridge, which hangs over the verge of the falls of the aar at handeck, where the river pitches down a precipice into a narrow and fearful abyss, shut in by perpendicular cliffs. at right angles with it comes the beautiful aerlenbach; and halfway down the double cascade mingles into one. thus he pursued his way down the hasli thal into the bernese oberland, restless, impatient, he knew not why, stopping seldom, and never long, and then rushing forward again, like the rushing river whose steps he followed, and in whose ice-cold waters ever and anon he bathed his wrists, to cool the fever in his blood; for the noonday sun was hot.
his heart dilated in the dilating valley, that grew broader and greener at every step. the sight of human faces and human dwellings soothed him; and through the fields of summer grain, in the broad meadows of imgrund, he walked with a heart that ached no more, but trembled only, as our eyelids when we have done weeping. as he climbed the opposite hill, which hems in this romanticvalley, and, like a heavy yoke, chafes the neck of the aar, he believed the ancient tradition, which says, that once the valley was a lake. from the summit of the hill he looked southward upon a beautiful landscape of gardens, and fields of grain, and woodlands, and meadows, and the ancient castle of resti, looking down upon meyringen. and now all around him were the singing of birds, and grateful shadows of the leafy trees; and sheeted waterfalls dropping from the woodland cliffs, seen only, but unheard, the fluted columns breaking into mist, and fretted with frequent spires and ornaments of foam, and not unlike the towers of a gothic church inverted. there, in one white sheet of foam, the riechenbach pours down into its deep beaker, into which the sun never shines. face to face it beholds the alpbach falling from the opposite hill, "like a downward smoke." when flemming saw the innumerable runnels, sliding down the mountain-side, and leaping, all life and gladness, he would fain have clasped them in his arms and been their playmate, and revelled withthem in their freedom and delight. yet he was weary with the day's journey, and entered the village of meyringen, embowered in cherry-trees, which were then laden with fruit, more like a way-worn traveller than an enthusiastic poet. as he went up the tavern steps he said in his heart, with the italian aretino; "he who has not been at a tavern, knows not what a paradise it is. o holy tavern! o miraculous tavern! holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which of themselves turn round and round! of a truth all courtesy and good manners come from taverns, so full of bows, and signor, sì! and signor, nò!"
but even in the tavern he could not rest long. the same evening at sunset he was floating on the lake of brienz, in an open boat, close under the cascade of the giessbach, hearing the peasants sing the ranz des vaches. he slept that night at the other extremity of the lake, in a large house, which, like saint peter's at joppa, stood by the water's side. the next day he wasted inwriting letters, musing in this green nest, and paddling about the lake again; and in the evening went across the beautiful meadows to interlachen, where many things happened to him, and detained him long.
